One of the more intriguing theories that refuses to die among paranormal investigators, conspiracy theorists and the like is that over thousands of years, aliens have assisted, guided or maybe messed with human evolution. These people believe that humans were basically knuckle draggers who couldn't make a wheel, let alone construct a pyramid or align buildings with the constellations. No, no. It had to be aliens, who appeared to these ancient humans to be gods because they had spaceships and advanced weapons that might have even included atomic bombs.
It further reminds me of conspiracy theory that modern inventions, such as lasers and microwave ovens, were not dreamed up by some guy burning the midnight oil at Bell Labs, but were stolen from alien technology found in flying saucers at Roswell and other places in the American west.
When I was a kid, I ate up all this sci-fi stuff. My dad, Conrad Bierwagen, believed in a weird mix of creationism-evolution that grew out of his Lutheran education and anthropology degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. He believed in the possibility of UFOs and claimed to have seen one -- or at least some very fast moving lights -- over a lake at a summer camp where he was a counselor in the late 1950s.
My father's father was equally wacky. He was a machinist, but he and my dad both claimed he had invented a device in his basement to measure brain waves, but no one took him seriously, and so he never patented it or anything. My grandpa kept his razor under a cardboard pyramid, saying the power from this shape kept it sharp for weeks
Grandpa had a copy of Swiss writer Erich von Daniken's Chariots of the Gods? I read about a third of this book in 1973 just months after seeing the TV version, In Search of Ancient Astronauts. (This show originally showed on German television as Erinnerungen an die Zukunft, or "Memories of the Future," also the original title of von Daniken's original German language book).
I think I was so fascinated by Ancient Astronauts that I watched it twice. Its narrator was the perfect guy, Rod Serling, whose literary and TV writings were full of space travel and aliens, as shown on his Twilight Zone. The things I remember most vividly were the humongous drawings on the Nazca plains of Peru, and some of the supposed pictures of aliens captured by human art.
For example, it seems that guys were racing around Jesus' crucifixion outside Jerusalem in Jetsons cars, if you believe the interpretation of von Daniken and others who looked at this 15th century fresco from the Visoki Decani monastery in Kosovo. Detail of those magnificent men in their flying machines is below.
I found another page, however, that interprets these guys not as aliens 
spying on Jesus and apostles, but stylized symbols representing the moon and the sun, a tradition of crucifixion art throughout the Middle Ages and dating back to early medieval Byzantine and Orthodox art. In fact, the sun and moon symbols go back to ancient Greece and Persia -- where there were sun and moon gods -- and were simply carried over to ancient Roman time, and further when people of Europe and central Asia went from pagan to Christian beliefs. (The page is half English and half Italian, but you can see the numerous personified sun and moon characters in crucifixion paintings.)
Yet another crucifixion picture from a cathedral in Mtskheta, Georgia seems to show two faces within discs (flying saucers?) also has been labeled as alien art. The same Italian page as referenced above shows a long tradition in Byzantine art of depicting the sun and moon as discs or saucers with faces, and this carried over into Renaissance painters in Europe. The sun and moon symbolism did not show up in crucifixion illustrations beyond the 1600s. You can see the entire series by art historian Diego Cuoghi and how religious symbolism is probably being misinterpreted here (note, though, that some sections are only in Italian).
I found several pages that recycled the same art and even captions that show ancient Egyptian carvings and paintings that are supposed to be of aliens similar the "gray" species that have that color of skin and almond shaped eyes, as well as some vehicles that look suspiciously like helicopters and airplanes!
If you look this bunch of hieroglyphics on a lintel in the outer hall of the Seti I Temple of Abydos in Egypt, you would think they are of a helicopter, a jet and a tank. Not to mention that in the bottom right corner is something that looks like yet another fantasy aircraft. They certainly do look like them, and you wonder how the artisans of the Egypt of yore knew about them!
The mainstream belief is that the hieroglyphs that were changed over because a new pharaoh came into power -- Rameses II, son of Seti I, who began construction of the temple. The group of hieroglyphs is a cartouche, or an oval shape of symbols spelling out a ruler's name. The symbols were carved over with a cartouche or reference to Rameses II, meaning the originals were chipped up and eroded, and coincidentally made shapes that look like modern flying machines. For analysis of this panel, see here.
Still, there is one nagging question: why did the installation of new characters on the temple wall somehow cause the appearance of what looks like a tank and three different aircraft?
Similar misinterpretation happens with pictures of the pharaoh Akhenaten and his family, with several sites saying these are pictures of aliens, when instead it was a brand new school of Egyptian art. Several UFO sites shout out that these are aliens, when in reality this is a painting of Pharoah Akhenaten's two daughters.
In "Amarna" ancient Egyptian art, realistic and even caricature pictures of the pharaoh and his family began to appear, showing them with distended bellies and big heads and lips. Another Amarna characteristic was to show Akhenaten, his wife, Nefertiti and family in friendly, intimate poses, something never before seen in Egyptian pictures.
Akhenaten did some dramatic things in his reign that influenced art. He changed the main god of worship from Osiris of the underworld to a main focus on Aten, a sun god, which was practically a move to monotheism, or woship of one god. He also moved the Egyptian capital from Thebes to Karnak. With these two changes, it seemed Akhenaten also encouraged innovation in artwork. It was a school of art and sweeping changes in the pharaoh's style, not aliens, who inspired these images.
I remember this guy scared the crap out of me when I saw him in the show In Search of Ancient Astronauts. He looks like some mindless Cyclops that would just kill you without thinking, some kind of ancient Terminator thing -- at least that was how I viewed him when I saw him back in 1973.
Scary One Eye Guy is one of thousands of cave paintings in the Tassili mountain ranges of the Sahara in Algeria in North Africa. They are a world heritage site and represent the evolving culture of the Tassili people as they went from primarily hunter-gatherer to agricultural.
Scary Cyclops appears along with another guy whose head resembled an old telephone rotary dial. The pictures are s from about 4,500 B.C.
So, why must people believe that such drawings are men from beyond the stars? Think of how many primitive cultures crafted elaborate, surreal masks for various ceremonies related to the cycles of life.
Just surfing I found a picture of a man from the Awa death cult of the Dogon people of Mali, Africa, who live due southwest of the Tassili range. The cult is supposed to help guide souls of the dead into family altars and bless their entry among the ancestors. This dancer's mask has a minor resemblance to Scary One Eye Guy, which suggests the cave drawings were of people in ceremonial masks, as opposed to humanoid aliens in spacesuits.
But if you do believe these drawings are of aliens I found a long page on "ancient astronauts," I direct you to the Crystal Links paranormal Web site.)
Labels: UFOs/Spacemen
